


Playing Old Soldiers With Old Wounds

by celeste9



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, First Kiss, First Meetings, Fix-It, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 01:53:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19241449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: Natasha wakes up on Vormir, more than a little confused as to why she isn't dead. With no way off the planet, it might be luck that brings Gamora and her ship to just the right place at just the right time. Who better to cross the galaxy with than another woman who is supposed to be dead?





	Playing Old Soldiers With Old Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Tom McRae.

When Natasha opens her eyes, the first thing she thinks is, _where’s Clint?_

She surveys her surroundings. No Clint. No stone. No weird robed guy.

She thinks, _no, no, Clint, you didn’t, you couldn’t, it was supposed to be me, it was my choice –_ And then she remembers.

She remembers the impact.

She died.

Then why is she still here?

Natasha is lying at the bottom of a cliff, hard ground beneath her, dark violet sky above. She remembers the cliff. She lies a moment longer, breathing, and then stands up.

She still has everything she came with. Her weapons, the suit, the wristband. The…

The broken wristband. She curses.

Natasha raises her eyes to the sky. She died. She knows she did. It must have worked. Clint got the stone, and he went back.

She has to have faith that it worked.

_Whatever it takes._

The more pressing matter for her now, personally, is how the hell is she going to get off this damn planet?

Natasha gazes at the mountain, peering up to where she can almost make out the ledge. Hell of a drop. It seems higher now than it had when she was… when she was falling. She is just considering whether she should attempt the climb when she hears a noise, small, and draws her gun, spinning around as she aims it.

She finds herself faced with a slim woman, green skin, dark hair edged in purplish red. Also holding a gun, aimed directly at Natasha.

“If you’re here for the stone,” Natasha says, “you’re too late.”

The woman’s face is still and hard, but there is recognition in her eyes at that. She knows about the stone.

Could she be one of Thanos’s?

“I know it’s gone,” the woman says. “It caused enough damage.”

If she is one of Thanos’s, Natasha thinks, she isn’t much of a supporter. She loathes the stone. Natasha can see it in the clenching of her jaw.

“Do you know where it is?” she asks, a weak bid for information. _Tell me if we did it. Tell me we did it._

But then, the woman wouldn’t know, would she? They’re years in the past.

Natasha hates time travel.

“Somewhere you won’t find,” the woman says.

_That’s fair._ Clearly she is as suspicious of Natasha as Natasha is of her. Perhaps more so: Natasha is fairly certain this stranger wants nothing to do with the stone. She doubts the woman thinks the same of her.

Natasha quickly runs through facts and scenarios in her head. The wristband is broken. She has no way off this planet and no means of communicating anyone who could help. She was dead ten minutes ago.

The woman arrived on Vormir somehow. Maybe she’s got an extra seat.

“I’m Natasha,” she says, and then takes a calculated risk. She lowers her gun. “I died here.”

There is the tiniest flicker in the other woman’s expression, a small hesitation. “Gamora.” Another hesitation. “I died here as well.”

“Gamora,” Natasha repeats. She knows that name. “You were the sacrifice.” But that’s impossible; that hasn’t happened yet, so how would she… how would she _know…_

“What year is it?” she demands. “What year is it?”

Gamora frowns. She still hasn’t lowered her gun. “2023.”

“But I…” Natasha holds one hand to her head. “It was 2014. I died in 2014, to get the Soul Stone, to bring it back to our time. So how… I…”

She really, really hates time travel.

“You are an Avenger,” Gamora says, not like a question. She is watching Natasha with careful intent, and her gun finally lowers. “You were the sacrifice.”

“Yes.”

“I came with Thanos,” Gamora continues, the explanation slow and deliberate, as though she is concerned about saying too much – or maybe not used to explaining much of anything. “From 2014. Nebula… my sister… We learned of the Avengers’ plans, and Thanos came to stop it. We defeated him.”

She says ‘we’, but she uses it differently. Her and Thanos, her and the Avengers. Whose side is she on?

“Thanos,” Natasha says, to be certain. _It worked, it worked, it has to have worked, it couldn’t have been for nothing._ “The Avengers stopped him.”

“Yes. The one in the metal suit. Stark. He used the gauntlet. He snapped his fingers and destroyed Thanos’ army.”

Natasha breathes out, and then she drops to her knee. “Tony,” she murmurs. “Is he…”

“He died.” Gamora pauses. “I’m sorry.” The words sound uncertain, like it’s something she isn’t used to saying.

Natasha takes another breath, and one more. She looks at Gamora. “But how am I _here_?”

Gamora shrugs her shoulders. “Nebula showed us the Avengers were trying to undo what Thanos had done in your timeline.”

“And here I am?”

“It seems,” Gamora says, “that we both have a second chance.” 

-

Gamora does have a ship, and she does have an extra seat. The ship is small and has definitely seen better days, a fact that’s obvious even given Natasha’s admittedly limited experience with spaceships, but it gets them off Vormir and that’s all Natasha wants.

“I can bring you to Earth,” Gamora offers, her gaze straight ahead through the glass.

It’s generous. Natasha has the feeling that Earth is a place Gamora has no wish to see again, not even for just long enough to drop off a passenger.

Clint is on Earth. Laura and the kids, Bruce, everyone Natasha knows. They believe her to be dead. Whoever used the gauntlet the first time, to undo the Snap, they must have brought her back, too. It’s the only explanation Natasha can think of.

She died, and they brought her back.

But Natasha _died,_ and to her friends, she is still dead. She made this choice and she doesn’t know what to do now that she finds herself alive. She hadn’t thought beyond the sacrifice because why would she?

Whatever it took, and there was no way in hell she was gonna let Clint do it.

“Take me somewhere quiet,” Natasha says, and Gamora merely inclines her head to her.

-

Dimious may have been quiet if the girl wouldn’t have run into them not ten minutes after they landed. She’s crying and blood drips from her temple; Natasha would have helped her regardless of what Gamora did.

But Gamora holds the girl by her shoulders and demands to know who hurt her.

She and Natasha ensure the perpetrator won’t be hurting any other girls. Natasha suspects he’d be dead if Gamora had been alone.

She isn’t sure she’s bothered by that.

-

Though the ship is small it does still have a hold, mostly empty, and space travel shares a lot in common with driving through America: long stretches of boring nothingness. They pass the time in the manner of women who have been trained to be fighters, women who now find stress relief with a knife in hand.

The space is tight but Natasha enjoys the close quarters sparring, the feel of Gamora’s breath warm in her face, the brush of her hair on Natasha’s skin when she spins away, the flow of air as they come together and move apart. Gamora is quick and graceful and a better challenge than Natasha has had in a long time; she suspects Gamora’s species has enhancements beyond humans and her skill is truly extraordinary.

Natasha loves it.

When Natasha finally ends up on her back, breathless and aching and exhausted, she accepts Gamora’s hand up and the faintly smug smile that comes with it. They eat ration bars in companionable silence in the cockpit with the darkness of space ahead of them and Natasha looks forward to their rematch.

-

On Raku they get mixed up in a kidnapping and on Vereen they get jailed in a case of mistaken identity and have to break out. Natasha says, “Either our combined luck is off the charts terrible or you’re doing this on purpose. I asked for quiet.”

Gamora only smirks at her.

-

Gamora can’t cook for shit, which is unfortunate, because neither can Natasha. There was a reason she had been eating peanut butter sandwiches back on Earth.

Luckily eggs are pretty standard across the universe, even if Natasha isn’t sure she wants to know what species laid these eggs in particular. She scrambles some in a beat-up old pan on the tiny stove in the ship’s canteen while Gamora leans on a counter and watches. The room is so small that Natasha has to lean around Gamora every time she reaches for something.

Gamora doesn’t talk much, which isn’t really a problem because Natasha likes quiet. She finds herself starting up conversation a lot, anyway, and squashes down the part of her awareness that knows it’s probably because she misses her friends, misses their chatter.

The compound had been so much fuller lately, fuller than it had been in years.

“I had this… Clint,” she says, pushing the eggs around in the pan. “He had a family. It was weird; I never really had one, didn’t know what they were supposed to be like. His wife talked a lot, his kids were messy and loud, and I… I loved spending time with them. I used to tell myself it was because Laura Barton’s macaroni and cheese was the best thing I’d ever had in my life, and way better than anything the SHIELD cafeteria turned out.”

Gamora’s gaze was fixed on her, focused, like she was mapping out the point. “Macaroni and cheese?”

“Guess it’s an Earth thing. Wow, I’m sorry. You’re missing out.” Natasha finds the plates and scoops half the pan of eggs onto each. “Anyway, what I meant was…” What did she mean? What a stupid story to tell.

“It wasn’t the macaroni and cheese you were there for?” One corner of Gamora’s mouth was tilting up, like she thought this was kind of funny.

“Too obvious, huh?” Natasha hands Gamora one plate.

“My family wasn’t exactly…” Gamora hesitates and then mimics Natasha’s phrasing. “My family wasn’t what you would call a real family either.”

Natasha thinks about Nebula and Thanos. “I guess not.”

They sit in the hold where they usually eat, plates on their knees. The eggs are kind of terrible. Natasha tells a different story, one about Clint and a mission in Buenos Aires, and feels weirdly victorious when Gamora laughs.

-

Sylia is where Natasha hones her skills with a blaster, after realizing that, no, they really don’t shoot like guns. She is so appalled by her own aim that she won’t leave until Gamora drills the proper handling into her; they practice for hours, shooting in an empty field at whatever targets they can scrounge up off the ship, old bottles destined for the trash, mostly.

Gamora doesn’t smell quite like anything Natasha can describe, and her touch is firm and rough when she critiques Natasha’s positioning. Natasha isn’t so naïve that she doesn’t recognize the feeling in her belly this inspires, the same feeling she gets when they spar on the ship, or sometimes when they sit in the cockpit, or share meals, but it’s difficult to acknowledge because it’s a feeling she hasn’t had in what seems like a very long time now.

(It generally doesn’t end well.)

When Natasha is satisfied, and when Gamora stops mocking the way she drops her grip too much when she fires, she takes out her guns and returns the favor. Gamora might not ever find a gun with bullets out here in the far reaches of space, but she’ll know how to fire one anyway.

They’re both pleased by that.

-

Alien booze, Natasha learns, is sometimes mostly like Earth booze, except for the times when it’s not. When it’s not, it’s really not. In a bar on a backwater moon she has a shot that she’s pretty sure would have floored Thor, and in a dirty alley on a metropolitan planet an alien they’ve just saved from a mugging gone even worse offers them a bottle of something Gamora assures Natasha would be like poison to her human physiology.

Natasha says, “Sure you’re not just trying to keep the whole bottle to yourself?” But she figures better safe than sorry, and lets Gamora have it.

On the ship, instead, she drinks an alien wine that’s just a bit stronger than what she’s used to while Gamora keeps her gratitude poison booze.

“You didn’t know me,” Gamora says as they sit in the hold with the ship on autopilot, slowly getting drunk. “The other me. The one that died.”

“No,” Natasha agrees. She finds herself watching Gamora’s long, lean lines, the arch of her neck. She is graceful like a dancer, like a fighter, even when she’s still.

“But you knew my sister.”

“Nebula? A little.”

“She wasn’t…” Gamora looks across the hold at the opposite wall, as though it’s easier to look there than to make eye contact while she speaks. “We weren’t very kind to each other. I think a lot of it was my fault. But the Nebula I met, the one from your future, she was different.”

It’s probably the most personal detail Gamora has ever offered to Natasha. She almost isn’t sure how to respond.

She was never very good at this.

“It was the Guardians,” Natasha says. “You used to travel with them, and so did Nebula. I think they changed you both. Well, I guess you all changed each other.” Natasha knows a lot about that sort of thing.

“Peter Quill,” Gamora mutters. She looks at Natasha. “Then you do believe people can change? In spite of… everything?”

An ache is burrowing in Natasha’s middle, remembering Clint. _Maybe you should._ “I died to save the world,” she says. “And considering where I came from? I guess I believe it, yeah.”

Gamora makes this funny sound, a snorted laugh. She drinks from her bottle and Natasha moves over to lean next to her. “I was not such a great person. Not to my sister, and not to… to many people.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s what second chances are for. Or third chances, or whatever number we’re on.”

“Yes,” Gamora says, a faint curve to her mouth.

Natasha thinks about kissing her, wonders what that poison booze on her lips would do. She wonders what Gamora would do if she did.

Natasha has always believed in doing instead of wondering, so she leans in. Gamora meets her halfway, maybe a little surprised, but her fingers brush Natasha’s hip.

She isn’t sure if it’s the kiss or the booze that makes her dizzy.

-

Peter Quill and his band of losers find them on Sulis. What’s surprising to Natasha is that Thor is with them, happier and less… round than when she saw him last.

His expression morphs through various stages of disbelief and astonishment before settling on simple joy. He engulfs her in a tight, squeezing hug. “Natasha! You aren’t dead!”

She laughs. “I guess not. I was as surprised as you.”

“Our friends must be overjoyed to have you back. Bruce thought it didn’t work.”

_Bruce,_ Natasha thinks. Bruce snapped his fingers. Bruce brought them back, and he tried to bring her back, too.

Of course he did. Warmth suffuses her insides.

Natasha tilts her head back to see Thor’s face. “I don’t think they know yet.”

Thor seems momentarily startled but then he nods; of anyone, Natasha thinks he will best understand. Thor, who was so lost and now appears to have found purpose in a new life traveling through the stars. “Whenever you tell them,” he says, “they will be glad.”

“Thank you,” Natasha says, and presses her face against his broad chest.

She isn’t ready, but she misses them. She missed Thor.

She is glad Quill found them.

-

They eat together, in a dingy diner on Sulis that serves what Natasha assumes is the alien equivalent of greasy comfort food. She sits next to Gamora and pretends she doesn’t notice the way Nebula remains mostly quiet amidst all the conversation, watching them.

She doesn’t bother to pretend not to notice the way Quill is sadly pining but Gamora ignores him and Natasha knows better than to get involved. Natasha almost feels a little sorry for him; he must really have loved her.

But it’s no one’s fault that Gamora isn’t the Gamora he loved.

After, they part ways, and Natasha embraces Thor again. She stands slightly back and watches the awkward, uncertain way Gamora offers Nebula her hand to clasp.

Nebula is surer about it, gripping Gamora’s forearm. She glances to Natasha; Natasha waves at her.

“I see you have found a better choice, sister,” Nebula says, and Gamora’s slight smile is wry and pleased.

-

On Cirano they foil a ring of kidnappers ensnaring girls and selling them, and then leave that sector of space upon hearing rumors of a woman who sounds remarkably like Carol Danvers. Natasha isn’t ready.

On the ship they spar, Natasha’s thighs around Gamora’s neck, flipping her to the ground, where Gamora twists out of her grip and pins her. Natasha bucks her hips; Gamora’s lips tilt into a smirk.

Natasha discovers that Gamora is even more flexible than she dreamed.

-

Senreya has three moons and is in the midst of a meteor shower when they arrive, far on the outskirts of civilization. The planet itself is only partly colonized and out here, they may as well be the only two people in the world.

Natasha stands beside Gamora and watches the bright flares of light, like stars falling. She tries to remember the last time she felt this content, able to just be, and can’t. “Finally,” she says. “Somewhere quiet.”

“For now,” Gamora says, the light reflecting in her eyes.

“Yeah, probably in an hour we’ll be arrested again, or in a bar fight at least,” Natasha agrees. She thinks they’re building a reputation; she thinks it isn’t just terrible luck that so many problems continue to find them.

Natasha thinks she’s pretty okay with that.

She lets her side brush against Gamora, feeling the slight heat build between their bodies, the way Gamora breathes out in an amused huff.

Now is more than Natasha thought she would ever have.

Now is long enough.

**_End_ **


End file.
